Oh joy - it's Gluck!

Much looking forward to hearing the OAE's first "Queens, Heroines and Ladykillers" concert this evening: it stars the incomparable Anna Caterina Antonacci (right) singing Gluck, Cherubini and Berlioz, with Sir Roger Norrington conducting (Royal Festival Hall, kick-off at 7pm). It got me wondering why, when Christoph Willibald von Gluck's music had such a long-range influence, we rarely hear much of it today. So I did some swotting and dropped Sir Roger a line...

Gluck’s surname means ‘Joy’ – and so does his music. Or some of it. Hear Kathleen Ferrier’s recording of the aria ‘Che faro senza Euridice’ (‘What is life to me without thee’) from Orfeo ed Euridice and the directness and depth of the music is unmistakeable: it’s pure aural gold. 

Gluck was a pivotal figure in opera’s development, switching its emphasis away from the virtuosity of its singers to the core of the drama they were supposed to express. His works prepared the ground not only for the operas of Mozart, but also – many decades later – Berlioz and Wagner, who revered him. His biography was written by Alfred Einstein. Strange, then, that it is rare to hear much of his work today, beyond a few “greatest hits”. 

Without Gluck (who was born in the Upper Palatinate in 1714 and died in Vienna in 1787) the history of opera would have been unrecognisable. Berlioz summed him up, writing: “He innovated in almost every field... he was gifted with an extraordinary feeling for expression and a rare understanding of the human heart, and his sole aim was to give passions a true, profound and powerful language.” 

Gluck developed an antipathy to traditional baroque Italian opera seria – perhaps because he was not especially good at writing them. He enjoyed some early successes in the genre, but an attempt to establish himself in London came to a rapid and ignominious end, drawing harsh words from Handel, who famously declared that Gluck “knows no more counterpoint than my cook”. 

Counterpoint was not what interested Gluck. Literature inspired him, poetry, drama and character; when an opera libretto was underpowered, so, arguably, were his results. But at his finest, Gluck reached the cutting edge of Enlightenment composition well ahead of anybody else. 

Einstein made an intriguing accusation, however, suggesting that just after the success of Orfeo ed Euridice in 1762, Gluck reverted to the old opera seria style he disliked for an opera entitled Ezio – possibly for the sake of a good fee. Perhaps he did. But perhaps it didn’t matter: according to Sir Roger Norrington, Gluck’s significance is deeper than just his attempts at musical revolution. 

“Gluck’s influence arose from his melodic genius as much as from his reforming zeal,” he comments. “The touching honesty of his arias gives them tremendous power. I admire the way Gluck risks great simplicity in his musical methods, at a time when elaboration and show were taken to such lengths – Gluck is basically a very serious composer, but he touches the heart with the strength of his feeling.” 

Gluck reached the zenith of fame via a tremendous controversy, stirred up as only Parisian high society knew how. He was the favourite composer of Marie Antoinette, who had once been his pupil in Vienna. With her help, he secured some operatic commissions in Paris in the 1770s and moved to live there. Madame du Barry, mistress of King Louis XV and no friend to his grandson’s queen-to-be, set up a direct opponent, championing a leading Italian composer of opera seria, Niccolo Piccini, and having him summoned to the French capital. Amid these musical dangerous liaisons, the city divided into passionate Gluckists and Piccini-ists, their fans even fighting duels to establish the superiority of their favourite. 

Ultimately the composers fought a musical duel, both writing operas on the same subject, Iphigénie en Tauride. The result? Gluck’s quality shone through for all to hear. 

Now it has a chance to do so again.

The OAE, Royal Festival Hall, 30 September, 7pm. Box office: 0844 875 0073

Le nozze di Chico?

Supposing the Marx Brothers had got hold of The Marriage of Figaro? It would have been perfect for them: Groucho as the Count, Chico as Figaro and Harpo as Cherubino, aided and abetted by Margaret Dumont as Marcellina and Kitty Carlisle as Susanna. Of course, they didn't. Yet...just look at this poster for A Night at the Opera. There's Susanna on the left, the Count behind her, Figaro taking her hand, Cherubino dreaming alongside...

It's no coincidence. The Marx Brothers, Fawlty Towers and The Marriage of Figaro all share the same root: Commedia dell'Arte. The Count, Basil and Groucho could be seen as derivatives of Pantalone, Chico and Figaro as Harlequin or Pulcinella, Susanna and Polly as Columbine, Harpo and Cherubino as Pierrot, while Fawlty Towers's Manuel is straight from the 'Zanni' character - the immigrant worker - and Sybil is, in certain ways, not all that far from Mozart's Countess...


It's perhaps one of the strengths of Glyndebourne's much-vaunted new production of Le nozze di Figaro, directed by Michael Grandage, that through a series of apparently zany juxtapositions it makes clear the archetypal, timeless nature of its drama - and the connections it leaves in the brain keep clicking into place for days afterwards.

It's a tad startling at first. The scene outside the mansion that accompanies the overture is relatively timeless - hustle, bustle, cleaning and gardening - and it's only when the Count and Countess swing into view inside a magnificent red vintage sportscar that we twig we're in the sixties or early seventies. The sets throughout are so Sevillian that they could be the Alcazar itself (pictured, left - almost certainly the model for the final scene in the garden...)

A medieval Moorish palace; 18th-century music on period instruments; action in an era in which menswear was seriously naff. Yet Grandage focuses intensely on the relationships and their nuances - which could have been taking place five centuries ago or last week. We live, we die, but the nature of love doesn't change. Strange how such an apparently post-modern approach with supposedly clashing eras delivers this indication so much better than the old Glyndebourne production by Graham Vick, apparently set in a rehearsal studio and now often referred to as "the one with the radiators". The stumbling block is, of course, the 'droit du seigneur' - all we can do about that is suspend disbelief.

The highlight of a fine cast was in many ways Sally Matthews's Countess. Her voice and her artistry just keep on growing. Now, equipped with considerable amplitude, a wider vibrato and terrific emotional intensity, she sounds almost Violetta-eque (though there's no actual sign of her singing Traviata any time soon). Lydia Teuscher's ideal Susanna ran her a close second, becoming better and better as the evening went by. Luxury casting, too, for Marcellina - Anne Murray, no less; and Don Basilio - Alan Oke, who despite popping up to fabulous effect in everything from Mozart to Anna Nicole, remains a bizarrely well-kept secret on the British opera scene. He should be better recognised as the consummate star he is, for his warm tenor tones, his magnificent acting and the best diction on stage.

Plaudits all round to the remaining cast, and if the Count appeared unconvincing from time to time, that was not the fault of the excellent Norwegian baritone Audun Iversen, but more that his costuming made it difficult to take him seriously.

At the helm was Robin Ticciati, crown prince of Glyndebourne - he takes over in two years' time when Vladimir Jurowski moves on to pastures new. Young he may be, but this was a thoroughly personal statement. The tempi are characterful and not too fast; there's enough space around the rhythms to hear everything fully; and from time to time the whole ensemble combined to produce a few moments of quiet and radiant tenderness: true Mozart magic.

The OAE did everyone proud, though I can't help wondering whether the decision to play at a pitch of A=430 is all that useful. It may have been the nature of the wind instruments of the correct time and place, but it isn't necessarily the nature of singers of today. During the recitatives, several of them were starting to drift up the teeniest notch, during the unaccompanied passages, towards the level to which they are presumably more accustomed, especially in the early part of the opera (it settled as the work progressed). Perhaps there are now apps to help singers to prepare with tweaked tuning, but you can't practise your recits with a bog-standard piano if everything has to be a quarter-tone flat. If the woodwind sounded truly revelatory, that would be another matter. But they don't.

On balance, then, a beautiful and fascinating evening in which the marriage of Figaro to this legendary tradition adds an enriching dimension. I'm going to clock off now, because otherwise we are going to end up matching the Ring Cycle characters with Fawlty and Harpo and co, and then goodness knows what will happen.

My first night shift

 I'd never ventured to the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment's Night Shift series before, having assumed that I'd be a bit over-the-hill for the target age group - as you know, I'm 29... But the promise of hearing Simon Rattle (left) conducting the Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and La Mer was irresistible, so last night your intrepid writer set out into the monsoon with mac and brolly to see what all the fuss was about.

Here's what happens. The OAE finishes its first concert of the evening - normal stuff - about 9pm. As the old audience flocks out of the RFH foyer, the new one flocks in. There's live music by the bar, in this case a folk-rock singer whose identity eludes me, with violinist and bassist; a lively atmosphere ensues as everyone meets their friends and enjoys the party feel. Then there's a short concert with announcer and chit-chat with the performers from 10pm to 11pm, and finally a DJ sets up in the foyer until midnight.

A range of creative ideas helps to recruit audience members: you can get a ticket for just £5 with the TextTicket scheme, or there's a four-for-three offer, and now the OAE has launched a venture for the Night Shift in the form of a Loyalty Card, with which you can save up a stamp for each NS concert you attend and eventually exchange them, at various levels, for a beer mat, a pint glass or an invitation for drinks backstage with the performers before the show. More details on their website.

Having so said, we didn't get off to the best start. Folk-rock doesn't always do it for me and my companion for the evening pronounced himself utterly allergic. Friends assured us that they'd heard worse, but when the no doubt very nice and very good singer started asking people to sing along, we slunk off and cowered with a glass of something at the furthest-away table we could find.

On the one hand, there's an argument that we should just have gone to the 7pm concert. Much more in-hall music, including Fauré's Pelléas et Mélisande and the Ravel Left Hand Piano Concerto on an Erard with Pierre-Laurent Aimard - and no monkey business. But on the other hand, the atmosphere inside the hall for the 10pm concert was something rather special.

A guest presenter, surrounded by welcoming pink light, got Simon and members of the orchestra talking about the music and the historic instruments on which they were playing it. Simon is a persuasive speaker at the best of times - and though a 'normal' audience might read some of what he said in programme notes, the impact is altogether more striking when it comes straight from the maestro's own chops. The flautist talked about why she loves playing Debussy with Simon; the horns demonstrated the difference in expected playing technique between 1904 and 2012; the oboist enthused about his unusual instrument. There's a sense of sharing, an atmosphere of downright friendliness, that really does make a difference. The end result is that the Night Shift audience could well have ended up much better informed than the 7pm one.

Despite the presenter's exhortations that we should all feel relaxed and were free to leave and re-enter the hall any time during the performance, only one person did so. Otherwise, the Night Shift audience was as quiet as the promenaders. I have it on good authority that the 7pm audience had had a cough-fest. We didn't. Perhaps everyone was as mesmerised by Simon's way with Debussy as I was. He has such an instinct for the pacing, ebb and flow of this music, for the confluence of image and symbol (we never heard the word 'Symbolism' in the intros - maybe we could, someday, as its use is not yet illegal) and the sheer refulgent gorgeousness of it that you could be swallowed up by its beauty and wish never to emerge.

Extra fascination in the use of instruments of Debussy's time: that super-astringent oboe was something you'd recognise from historical recordings; the horns and other brass were finer, lighter, mellower; the flute had a darker, stiller timbre, suggestive of pan-pipes; the gut strings add seductive colour and make a subtle difference to the balance and blend. Simon pointed out that he'd never heard Debussy on original instruments before this tour; it's not generally done. He compared the instruments' tones to the combination of flavours in a Thai meal: a squeeze of lime juice, a smattering of chilli.

In the end, I wasn't too long-in-tooth for the Night Shift. People of all ages attended; the youngest I saw must have been about seven, the oldest probably about 77. In between, plenty of 30-and-40-somethings besides 20-somethings. A younger audience than most concerts, yes. But this was about more than being young. This was an audience that wanted something a little different and knew where to find it.

Personally, I'd enjoy a halfway house. A concert in which the conductor and players talk to the audience - not at the expense of playing time, but enough to make a connection. In which the lighting is good - dark in the auditorium to encourage concentration, but soft and warm on stage. In which people feel relaxed enough to move about, but choose not to because they want to hear the music. In which you can take in something to drink, including hot chocolate when soaked through. I'd prefer an earlier start to my mix-and-match event, too - it's annoying to have to run out at the last note to catch one of the few trains that go your way at that hour. And if there's to be foyer music, it would be nice if it could be something idiomatic provided by members of the orchestra we're about to hear, rather than a disconnected genre.

I didn't stay for the DJ. Had to get that train... And besides, after the glories of La Mer I didn't fancy any more sound. If you've just heard Simon Rattle conducting Debussy, you want to hold the impression of it as long as humanly possible. You don't like it to be shoved aside by amplified pop. (Proofing my draft of this post, I noticed, by the way, that I mistyped that last remark as "amplified poop". Nuff said.)

But overall, full marks to the OAE not just for magnificent playing but also for creative thinking; and for their willingness to experiment with the new, as well as resuscitating the old in the form of those spot-on historic instruments.

A few more thoughts after the Sir Colin interview

The response to my interview with Sir Colin Davis has been fascinating to say the least. Those who have written/tweeted/blogged about it (special thanks to Boulezian and Unpredictable Inevitability) have been polarised, naturally, into those who agree with his words about the early music movement and those who don't. Though the latter have declared his words "insulting" and said they find his classical repertoire "boring" etc, there have,  to my surprise, been many more declaring themselves in full accord with him.

I have the impression his statements have been cathartic: many of us have been feeling this way for 30 years. But it needed a grand maestro to step up and speak out about some of the idiocies that have gone on in the name of "historical correctness" before anyone would take it on board.

Here's my own little journey. Back in the early to mid 1980s, as a student I found myself in places that now seem to me quite astonishing. By an odd series of coincidences I spent a lot of time in university holidays sitting, metaphorically, at the feet of people like Andras Schiff, Richard Goode, the Emerson Quartet and some experts on Schenkerian analysis in New York...



Then, come term-time, I was back in Cambridge being told that I was not allowed to play Bach on the modern piano - unless I would agree to play it with no dynamics, no pedal at all and a mode of expression only appropriate to a harpsichord. I promise this is not an exaggeration. That was rather a shock to the system, since - as you can well imagine - all I really wanted to do by then was to learn the Goldberg Variations.

Not that there was much chance to practise anything at all: so academic was the course that it involved a performance option only as one-seventh of one year of one's final degree, and the faculty seemed to believe - honest to goodness - that if you were going to play L'Ile Joyeux in your third year, there was no need for you to practise in the first two! All this accompanied by the immortal words "WE ARE NOT A CONSERVATOIRE". (Matched only by those of a London music college that I later attended for what turned out to be three weeks: "Well, we're not a university, you know - you can't just pick and choose..." Upon which, exit, pursued by a bear.)

The impression that lingered from that time was so negative, provincial, blinkered and anti-musical that it still rankles a quarter-century later. Today, though, I can recognise the good things I learned there too. These include a passion for Monteverdi (well, I already had that beforehand, but never mind); a familiarity with the Bach Cantatas that I would never otherwise have acquired; an inspirational course on German Romantic opera from Weber to Tannhauser (thank you, Prof Deathridge!); close-knit seminars on Gershwin and Schubert's Winterreise with Robin Holloway; and analysis with the late Derrick Puffett, the man who steered me - again by coincidence - towards Die tote Stadt.

Forgive the digression. In short, I found that the concentration on superficial details of instrument, articulation, lack of vibrato, etc, risked losing sight of the most important thing: the actual content of the music itself. There seemed an implicit assumption that nobody wrote music in order to express any form of emotion before about 1780. This is not to say that those superficial details of articulation, instrumentation et al are not important to some degree. They are. But they became an end in themselves - when they should have been only a beginning.

That was the 1980s for you: the era in which appearance became more important than substance. The era in which spin-doctoring, marketing and the hard-sell took over priority in place of quality content. The ingredients didn't matter, as long as you could sell it to the unsuspecting public. And all the government cutbacks at that time meant that it was far more practical - ie, cheaper - to use smaller ensembles so that you didn't have to pay so many musicians. If you could convince people that this was correct, so much the better. The giant performance of Handel's Messiah in Westminster Abbey that inspired Haydn to compose The Creation was quietly and conveniently ignored. Richard Taruskin has written much more eloquently than I can about how the HIP movement tells us more about our own time than it does about the 18th century.

But I don't believe that over time human nature has changed that much; music and its impact upon us hasn't changed that much either ("If music be the food of love, play on..." - Shakespeare); and if anyone doubts the importance of emotion in music, why don't they just listen to a bit of Monteverdi? Hear Orfeo's great aria 'Possente spirto', then try telling me its composer didn't write to express emotion and see if your ears don't turn red.

What counts most, ultimately, is authenticity of spirit. That means a full 360-degree understanding of the music's workings in terms emotional, spiritual, textual, historical, analytical, communicative, songful, expressive, harmonic, progressive, instrumental, linear, contrapuntal, technical, sonic, philosophical, inspirational and much, much more. It means acquiring the instrumental/vocal/conducting expertise to get this across without a struggle - which, as Sir Colin said, is where freedom really begins. Essentially it means fusing one's own powers as a musician with those of the composer, to empathise with a work and bring out the best in it, in a spirit that is faithful to its world.

I just listened to 30 different recordings of Schumann's 'Spring' Symphony for a piece in the April issue of BBC Music Magazine. My favourite? [drumroll]: John Eliot Gardiner with his Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. This choice took me almost by surprise. But after listening to Bernstein, who made the slow movement sound like Mahler, Solti, who made the opening sound like Wagner, and Karajan, who just sounded like Karajan all the way through, here was a performance that sounded like - well, Schumann. (Buy the magazine to read more...)

I may be a HIP sceptic still. There is no doubt, sadly, that the movement has sometimes advanced the wrong people for the wrong reasons; it has promulgated approaches that may be radical, but that are often misleading, mistranslated or misinterpreted into going against the very grain of what it purports to do (see Sir Colin on Geminiani, or just read Leopold Mozart, to see how the words on 18th-century violin playing have been distorted for dubious ends).

It may have shaken away the Karajan-ness of Karajan, who (let's face it) was disliked for more than his music-making... But it has had the unfortunate side-effect of ghettoising the works of Bach, Haydn and Mozart so that few mainstream conductors dare touch them without applying supposedly "correct" mannerisms of phrasing, articulation and so forth - which often are not all that correct, especially when applied simply because they're a sound that's expected, rather than a concept that is properly thought through. Nothing is more dangerous than a little knowledge. I despair of ever hearing my favourite Mozart symphonies being played with any real gumption again, or without drums that sound like cornflakes packets, or without wince-worthy vibrato-less string tone - it's possible to make a good sound with no vibrato, of course, but frequently it doesn't happen. I am deeply unhappy about this: it's like being thrown into exile.

Thank almighty God that the odious phrase "authentic" was jettisoned after Rosalyn Tureck and her friends proved in the mid 1990s that there was no such thing anywhere, in any field. Still, there's also something inherently patronising in the term "Historically Informed" since it implicitly pre-supposes that everybody else is not. This is not true. The many great pianists who play Bach on the modern Steinway, Bosendorfer or Fazioli are perfectly well informed, often more so than their counterparts - they just choose to play on an instrument that can actually be heard in Alice Tully Hall. I'd defy any early music specialist to be better informed about Bach than, for instance, Angela Hewitt.

And soon I am going to Lucerne to hear Andras Schiff conduct the B minor Mass and I can't wait, because his performance of the St Matthew Passion with the Philharmonia a decade or more ago was the most inspiring, exciting performance I've yet heard of this work, shining out in technicolour with all its inner conviction, passion and spirituality.

I've often felt that too many supposedly "correct" performances are based simply on an orchestra turning off its vibrato and stringing up with gut. Bingo: two strokes and you're HIP.  On the other hand, hearing the OAE with Sir Simon Rattle doing Fidelio at Glyndebourne was simply magnificent. Besides, HIP orchestral musicians are often far better informed about the music they play, more passionately committed to their task in hand and generally more intelligent, upbeat and contributive than certain other strata of the profession who sometimes veer towards "Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die..." (Tennyson).

When HIP works, well played and deeply understood, it is fabulous. I would like to be the first to applaud JEG for his Schumann and his amazing Bach Cantatas series, which I'm potty about (I've also heard him screw up a couple of romantic operas over the years, but there is no reason why every conductor should be equally good in all repertoire, is there?). Ditto for Norrington: I'm a hundred per cent with Sir Colin on that total lack of vibrato - yowch! - and remember with sorrow an absolute carwreck of a Dvorak Cello Concerto at the RFH... Yet I've attended performances in which he's conducted Haydn's The Creation, Mozart's The Magic Flute (a Prom about 25 years ago), Schubert's Ninth and the Berlioz Symphonie fantastique - all of them thrilling, vivid and loving.

As for harpsichords, the playing of Andreas Staier has been a revelation. Just listen to the warmth, generosity and nobility of this:



Now, Staier plays equally wonderfully on a harpsichord, a fortepiano or a modern piano. And there's the rub. If the musicianship is good enough, the instrument stops mattering. Great musicianship transcends its medium. But if that great musicianship is not present, no amount of superficial "correctness" can ever replace it. So where does that leave HIP?


I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere. If there's a rapprochement taking place, if we are all starting to pull together rather than against one another, that is laudable. Chamber music playing is now being taught in Oxford (I don't know about Cambridge), while the music colleges today offer proper degrees, not just diplomas (or will do as long as they can continue to exist under the present government). Andras Schiff has recorded on early pianos and sometimes conducts from a harpsichord.



Alina Ibragimova plays solo Bach and more with inspired musicianship, great tone, yet no vibrato.



But the Emperor's New Clothes, even if they're looking a bit faded, are still being worn nonetheless. If Sir Colin's words can help to pull away the last remaining veils of illusion and refocus us on what really matters - the deep substance of the authentic musical spirit - then I'm happy to have been a channel through which he was able to do so.